There is no way that I could even begin to empirically assess the impact of this man's writings on my intellectual development. Suffice it to say that, without a doubt, I would not be the person I am today, nor hold the beliefs that I do, without the influence of this man.

I will not delve into a biographical narrative of Heinlein's extraordinary life. If that is something you might enjoy reading, there is a good biographical synopsis here, as well as a published two volume set from William H. Patterson available here. No, this entry is entirely self-concerned; it is about the influence of Heinlein upon me.

Unlike many acolytes of Heinlein's, I did not cut my adolescent teeth on his early juveniles (young reader/adolescent literature), so I cannot attribute challenges to my adolescent mind the likes of Citizen of the Galaxy, or Red Planet. I did not even discover his juveniles until well into my adulthood, and at that point they no longer held any great value for me as they are principally adventure stories with a light sprinkling of moral narrative and a heavy dose of hard science.

For a glimpse at just how influential this man was upon others, just read this 2007 overview of the celebration of his life from Reason.com. His influence on me began when I picked up a paperback copy of Starship Troopers when I was in my mid-teens. Sure, there was plenty of action in the book, but nowhere near as much as I was expecting with from a novel with such a title. Instead, what I found was a deeply skeptical criticism of contemporary Western culture, its social democracies, and a philosophic reflection on the nature of leadership and citizenship. It also goes without saying that this novel is a bildungsroman written expressly for an audience demographic into which I fit perfectly at the time. The protagonist of the story, Juan "Johnny" Rico, is a young jerk who acts on impulse and this story is about his coming of age and discovery of what it means to be a man, a citizen, and a leader among men. What teenage boy could not find value in such a narrative?

A nearly ubiquitous feature of Heinlein novels is his "wise old man" archetype through which he speaks directly to the reader. In Starship Troopers, Colonel DuBois is this figure. During Rico's class in History and Moral Philosophy, a fellow student of Rico's asserts the old adage that 'violence never solves anything, to which DuBois replies:

This passage challenges the reader to confront the explicit truth of reality as the author sees it. It pushes the reader to look at reality in an historic context and to see liberty (the ultimate goal of all libertarian beliefs), as the invaluable, tenuous state of being for which violence is justified to protect. This book did not make me a libertarian, but it planted that seed.